The trial examined allegations that Sheriff Joe Arpaioâ??s emphasis on immigration enforcement led deputies to target Latino drivers based on their race. / David Wallace, The Arizona Republic

by JJ Hensley, The Arizona Republic

by JJ Hensley, The Arizona Republic

PHOENIX -- A federal judge's ruling that the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office engaged in racial profiling against Latinos could bring significant changes to the agency's controversial approach to immigration enforcement.

U.S. District Judge Murray Snow issued a lengthy ruling that prohibits sheriff's deputies from using race as a factor in law-enforcement decisions, from detaining people solely for suspected immigration violations and from contacting federal immigration authorities to arrest suspected illegal immigrants who are not accused of committing state crimes.

The ruling, issued Friday afternoon - more than eight months after the final arguments were heard - brings an end to a case that started with the 2007 arrest of a day laborer near Cave Creek.

The ruling also provides thorough dissection of the constitutional violations that Sheriff Joe Arpaio's immigration-enforcement efforts brought on Latinos in Maricopa County, and frequently contrasts Arpaio's own press releases and statements to media with testimony he offered during the trial.

Critics of Arpaio's immigration enforcement efforts, many of whom have for years accused the Sheriff's Office of discriminating against Latinos, said they felt vindicated by the ruling.

"It seems like what we have always known, that racial profiling was being done was brought out by Judge Snow, now I think we all need to look at the remedies," said Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, a longtime critic of the sheriff's immigration policies.

"In my mind, people have been very abused in our communities," she said. We knew racial profiling was taking place and it was very hard to prove it."

Casey also took a broad view of the issue, drawing on recent court rulings, including the U.S. Supreme Court's decision on Arizona's immigration-enforcement law, to conclude that the federal government is trying to send a message to local law enforcement.

"It is very clear that when it comes to people in the country unlawfully, that federal law does not want any local law-enforcement participation," he said.

Tourist detained

Arpaio's frequent boast that his office would not change its approach to immigration enforcement after the federal government stripped deputies of that authority in 2009, and his subsequent decision to train all deputies based on an inaccurate understanding of immigration law, made the plaintiffs' claims relevant, Snow wrote.

Had the Sheriff's Office ceased immigration enforcement after Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials removed the deputies' "287(g)" authority to enforce federal immigration law, the plaintiff's claims might have been moot, he wrote.

"As was made clear by the testimony of the sheriff and other members of the MCSO command staff at trial, nothing has changed," Snow wrote.

The case began when Manuel de Jesus Ortega Melendres, a Mexican tourist who was in the United States legally, was stopped outside a church in Cave Creek where day laborers were known to gather. Melendres, the passenger in a car driven by a white driver, claims that deputies detained him for nine hours and that the detention was unlawful.

Eventually, the case grew to include complaints from two Hispanic siblings from Chicago who felt they were profiled by sheriff's deputies, and from an assistant to former Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon whose Hispanic husband claims he was detained and cited while nearby white motorists were treated differently.

The lawsuit did not seek monetary damages. Instead, the plaintiffs asked for the kind of injunctive relief that the Sheriff's Office has resisted in the past - a declaration that spells out what deputies may or may not do when stopping potential suspects, and a court-appointed monitor to make sure the agency lives by those rules.

Snow gave each side 20 hours to present their case in a tightly controlled trial that took place in late July and early August in the federal courthouse in Phoenix.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs took a three-pronged approach, using Arpaio's own statements about undocumented immigrants along with racially insensitive requests from constituents for immigration enforcement to show the sheriff's callous attitude toward the rights of Latinos and his agency's intention to discriminate.

Data showing that Latino drivers were more likely to be stopped during the sheriff's immigration sweeps, and that those stops were likely to last longer, was designed to show the outcome of that intent. And statements from residents who claimed they were victims of profiling were intended to illustrate the impact of the sheriff's policies.

Arpaio statements cited

The ruling indicates that Snow agreed with the attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union on many of their points, and frequently cites Arpaio's statements to the media and his office's news releases to draw conclusions about Arpaio's point-of-view at the time of the immigration sweeps and work-site raids, regardless of what the sheriff said on the witness stand.

At one point, Snow says flatly, the sheriff's testimony was incorrect when it came to the issue of whether racially insensitive emails from constituents motivated some of the sheriff's saturation patrols, in which deputies would typically flood neighborhoods with high Hispanic populations.

"The evidence demonstrates that on October 4, 2007, the MCSO conducted a small-scale saturation patrol on the corner of Ellsworth and Octotillo, based on a complaint transmitted to the MCSO on October 2 that Hispanic day laborers congregated there," Snow wrote.

Cecillia Wang, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants' Rights Project, said the ruling supports the ACLU's claim that the direction in the Sheriff's Office comes from Arpaio, despite his deputies' attempts during the course of the trial to distance the six-term lawmaker from the day-to-day decisions of the office.

"What he says publicly either to constituents in response to their racist emails, or what he writes in his book, did set the tone and set policy for the Sheriff's Office. The evidence showed that the sheriff does set policy. His response to overly racist letters led down the road to these immigration raids," Wang said. "This is an agency where you saw a classic instance of a law-enforcement culture that led directly to a situation where all the Latino residents of the county who the sheriff swore to protect and serve were victimized by his law enforcement."

Snow also frequently cited data presented at the trial about the ethnicity of the suspects the sheriff arrests and detains to come to the conclusion that sheriff's deputies used race as a factor in making law-enforcement decisions. Even if race was not the only factor, as the Sheriff's Office has contended, the practice resulted in more Latinos being arrested during the sheriff's sweeps and Latinos being detained longer than non-Latino counterparts during traffic stops.

The practices led to violations of the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of equal protection, Snow wrote.

Snow used the data provided to support his skeptical view that sheriff's deputies actually engaged in a "zero tolerance" policy requiring them to arrest anyone who violated the law during patrols.

Several deputies testified that bad drivers are so prevalent in Maricopa County it is easy to find moving violations to make traffic stops.

"To accept Deputy (Michael) Kike's testimony in its entirety would mean that Deputy Kikes spent at least four days on traffic patrol in an environment where so many people commit traffic or equipment infractions it would be impossible to stop them all," Snow wrote. "And all of that resulted in five arrests over four days, all of which just happened to be of Hispanic persons who were in the country without authorization."

Snow's injunction preventing sheriff's deputies from contacting ICE when they have detained suspected undocumented immigrants who are not accused of violating a state law could be the most immediate and visible affect of the ruling.

The Sheriff's Office enacted a policy after deputies lost their federal-immigration authority that authorized deputies to contact ICE's law-enforcement agency response team whenever they encounter such immigrants.

The Sheriff's Office has not had a formal saturation patrol in years, but the agency continues to engage in work-site raids looking for identity theft and fraud suspects. Casey, Arpaio's attorney, said it was too early to tell what Snow's ruling would do to those operations.

The sticker issue might come with the role of a court-appointed monitor to ensure the ruling is properly enacted: Arpaio flatly refused to consider the idea in an effort to resolve a racial-profiling complaint the U.S. Justice Department brought against the Sheriff's Office. That case hasn't been resolved.

Casey indicated Arpaio's feelings have not changed.

"I don't know how there can be a monitor on a constitutionally elected representative," Casey said. "It will supplant the sheriff's authority."

Wang declined to provide details on what the ACLU will ask for, but said some oversight would be necessary to correct the problems the federal court identified.

Snow set a hearing for mid-June to determine how the Sheriff's Office will ensure it is adhering to the court's ruling.